QES - Suicide Surveillance

QES Suicide Surveillance system has been developed to support the real-time surveillance of suspected suicides with the input from multiple agencies to include public health, police, mental health organisations and many other services and partners.

The multi-agency collaboration not only enables real-time data to be recorded and reported on to inform prevention, but also strengthens the provision and signposting of bereavement support and can support the case management of reviews to establish where improvements in services could be made and highlights.

The QES Real-time Surveillance portfolio has been extended to additional applications to include Attempted Suicide Surveillance, Drug and Alcohol-related Deaths Surveillance and Workforce Suicide Surveillance which supports national or large organisations to monitor, record and review suspected suicides within their own workforce.

Key Features

• Real-time recording, surveillance and reporting of suicides
• Facilitates a multi-agency, collaborative approach to implementing suicide prevention and postvention strategies supported by real-time data and location heatmaps
• Provides a unique opportunity for identifying risk factors, reacting to emerging patterns and preventing further tragedies on a local, regional and national level
• Thorough notification forms for compiling extensive detail on demographics, characteristics and behaviours
• Automatic consolidation of a series of details providing a comprehensive view of circumstances in one centralised location
• Case linking feature ties together connected cases, highlighting common themes in individuals with a mutual link or who may have been known to one another
• Postvention and bereavement support made more effective by identifying family/friends and witnesses
• Interactive reporting dashboard provides instant access to extensive real-time data enabling local authorities to identify, and react to, emerging trends and patterns instantly

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The system has been used to support the development of bereavement services and signposting as well as the use of in-depth reporting and analysis to identify risk factor groups and emerging clusters.

QES have been informed by user groups of a range of positive user outcomes to include informing local cluster policies, conducting deep dives into the impact of COVID-19, establishing pain clinics from identifying correlations with chronic conditions via the system and many more impactful outcomes. Contact us to learn more about how the system has supported users across the country.

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The user group of the Suspected Suicide Surveillance system has continued to grow and is almost 50% of England’s local authorities, along with their multi-agency partners.

This includes our original development partners Thrive LDN with partners such as Met Police, South Yorkshire who supported the continued evolution of the system and have since published their evaluation of a system for real-time suicide surveillance, and many other local authority areas and wider organisations.

Download the QES booklet, where you can find a summary on the background and features of the QES system.

The user group is continuing to expand their real-time surveillance work to include the QES Drug and Alcohol-related Death system and QES Homeless Mortalities system as a wider RTS project on sudden deaths. Visit the QES website to talk about your surveillance and case management requirements.